The Black Sheep's Secret Child Read online

  “Security? Word on the street is you can’t afford security anymore.”

  Siggy’s face grew ruddy. “Get out,” he spat.

  “Not without the financials,” Trent retorted. He was as calm as his father was upset. “As guardian of the majority shareholder, Savannah needs to see what’s going on.”

  Observing the exchange between father and son, Savannah almost felt sorry for her father-in-law. If Siggy hadn’t been such a domineering bastard, perhaps they could’ve work through their differences amicably. But Siggy wanted to maintain control of his company, and to do so he needed control over her son.

  With the four of them staring each other down, Savannah wasn’t sure what would happen next. Without access to the computers, she had no idea how they could force Gerry or Siggy to open up the books.

  But apparently, Trent knew exactly what he was doing. “Things will not go well for you if we get lawyers involved,” he said ominously.

  As a privately held company, West Coast Records was not required to file any public documents regarding its finances. The board membership was composed of six of Siggy’s cronies but Savannah doubted they would be interested in being on the receiving end of any legal action she might take against them on behalf of her son.

  “Gerry, give them access.” Siggy slid from behind the desk, stalked up to his son and glared at him. “You might have won this round but I’ll burn West Coast Records to the ground before I’ll let you anywhere near this company.”

  Bold words, Savannah thought. But as she watched her father-in-law exit the room, she wasn’t completely sure if it was bravado or a touch of madness that drove him where Trent was concerned.

  Gerry did something with the computer and then left the room, as well.

  As Trent slid behind the desk and began tapping away, Savannah sank into a guest chair opposite him.

  “How do you do it?” She sat with her hands clasped tight in her lap and exhaled to calm herself. “How do you face him down so calmly? Doesn’t he get to you?”

  “Years of practice have taught me to cope.” But stress lines had appeared beside his compressed lips and his eyes were guarded.

  Long minutes ticked by while Trent looked through the computer records. Savannah had a hard time containing her restless energy. Any second she expected Siggy to reappear and begin to berate her once more. If before this she’d been determined to keep Dylan out of his clutches, now she was even more convinced she couldn’t let her son be anywhere near him.

  She paced around the room, paying special attention to the photos and awards that lined the walls. From the look of things, the label hadn’t had any great success since the early ’90s. And she had a hard time finding Rafe’s stamp on anything. This made her sad. In many ways her husband had been trapped by his position as eldest son.

  Could he have done as Trent had and made his own way? Savannah wasn’t sure Rafe had it in him to break free of his father’s hold. Rafe was firstborn. His father’s pride and joy. The weight of expectation had turned him into a mini Siggy.

  “Finding anything?” She came to stand behind Trent and peer over his shoulder at the monitor.

  Despite the seriousness of her situation, the stressful confrontation with Siggy and her fears for her son, she couldn’t stop herself from snatching a lungful of Trent’s familiar cologne. Her head spun as her senses came alive. His long fingers darted across the keyboard and she couldn’t help herself from remembering how they’d felt biting down on her skin as she came the previous night.

  His thick, wavy hair enticed a woman’s fingers to roam. Not a speck of lint dotted the shoulders of his dark blue suit, but that didn’t stop Savannah’s craving to sweep her fingers across the material. Last night’s reckless encounter had stirred up a beehive of longing. She hungered to touch him again and was willing to make up lame excuses to do so. Before she succumbed to temptation, she put her hands behind her back.

  “What are you doing? That doesn’t look like financial records.”

  At her question, Trent didn’t glance up. “A friend of mine lent me a program.” He removed a flash drive from the computer’s USB port and slipped it into his pocket.

  “What sort of program?” Savannah stepped back as he got to his feet.

  “I’ll tell you in the car.”

  “Is all this really necessary?” She wasn’t sure what to make of Trent’s cloak-and-dagger routine. Was he behaving this way for her benefit? Acting as if the trip to West Coast Records’ offices was more productive than it had been?

  Trent spread his fingers across the small of her back and nudged her toward the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  Obviously he wasn’t going to say another word while they were still in the building. As badly as she wanted to know what was going on, Savannah was enjoying the warmth of his palm far too much to be hurried.

  As on the way in, they encountered no one, but the boardroom door was closed as they passed. Once in the parking lot, Savannah couldn’t restrain her curiosity one second longer. “What’s going on? Were you able to determine anything from the financials?”

  “They gave us only the most rudimentary access.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means they were ready for us. We got a year-to-date profit and loss statement and balance sheet. It shows that the company is profitable.”

  “How profitable?”

  “Enough that they should be paying their artists. But you say they aren’t.”

  “That’s the impression that I was given. Maybe they are paying some but not all.”

  “Money is going out,” Trent said, opening the passenger door so she could slide in. “I just can’t determine if it’s actually going to the artists.” Without saying another word, he shut the car door, leaving her to mull over his last statement.

  She waited until he’d slid behind the wheel and started the engine before repeating her earlier question. “What was with the USB drive?”

  “I figured we wouldn’t get much. So I came prepared. A friend of mine in Vegas runs a security company. And he wouldn’t want it spread around, but he’s a gifted hacker. I called him this morning, explained the problem, and he gave me a worm to implant in their system.”

  “A worm?” Savannah had watched enough TV to know what he was talking about. But she had never considered that real people used them. “Are you telling me you planted some sort of spy software in the company’s computer system?”

  “As good a hacker as he is, he could’ve cracked their system from the outside, but why bother when it’s so much easier to do it from the inside?”

  Savannah was starting to feel hopeful. “So what does this get us?”

  “Full access to their system.”

  Leave it to Trent to come to her rescue once again. Savannah would never have conceived of something so clever and potentially illegal.

  “So you’ll be able to see what’s actually going on?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  “Is it illegal?”

  “I’d say it’s a gray area. Dylan is the majority shareholder in the company. They are denying you access to the books.” Trent backed the car out of the parking spot. “But it doesn’t matter. Logan assures me his software’s untraceable. They’ll never know what hit them.”

  * * *

  Adrenaline buzzed through Trent’s veins as he negotiated the LA traffic on the way to the hotel Savannah had chosen until she found a more permanent place to settle. The fight with his father had gone as expected. Trent glanced at Savannah. She hadn’t reacted well to Siggy’s vicious attack. It had taken a great deal of willpower to keep from acknowledging her distress and comforting her back at the label. He didn’t want either her or his father to get the idea something was going on between them.

  In the old days when he and his father had fought, she had often come to him with comforting words. Initially he’d rebuffed her attempts to make him feel better, not understanding what she needed was reassurance
that he was all right.

  He glanced at her now. She stared out the passenger window. Her face was impassive, but her hands, clasped around the purse in her lap, were rigid with tension. He recognized that she was stressed. He gathered breath, refrained from speaking. What was he going to say? That everything was going to be fine? He didn’t know that. And what was he doing getting more deeply involved in her problem with his father when he’d determined a decade earlier that he was done with the family drama?

  “Dealing with Siggy isn’t going to be fun or easy,” he said, stating the obvious. “Are you sure you don’t want me to help you get back on your feet somewhere besides here?”

  When he made the offer the night before, he hadn’t done so as an ex-lover or a brother-in-law. They’d been friends long before either of those things, and whether he’d always been able to admit it or not, she’d been there for him during some very dark days.

  “I told you last night that I’m not going to take your money.”

  “You could think of it as a loan.”

  Her features relaxed into a wry expression. “I’ve considered that,” she explained in an overly patient tone. “My answer is still no.”

  When had she become stubborn? Trent caught himself frowning. She wasn’t the same woman he’d broken up with two years earlier. And he wasn’t sure what to make of the change.

  “Why are you so opposed to letting me help you?”

  “I wouldn’t be in the car with you if I was opposed to letting you help me.”

  “Then why won’t you take money from me? It’s not as if I’d notice it was gone.”

  She cocked her head and stared straight forward. “I can’t explain it. Getting you to help me sort out what’s wrong at West Coast Records isn’t personal. I could hire a lawyer to do that.”

  “I thought you were broke?”

  “I might be able to afford a really bad attorney,” she retorted with a trace of a smile. And then she sighed. “To be honest, I wasn’t thinking straight before last night.”

  “Last night? What changed last night?”

  “Have you forgotten already?” Her voice packed just the right amount of sultry amusement to stir his lust.

  He tightened his grip on the steering wheel to keep his hands from wandering across the space between them and slipping beneath the hem of her dress to find her bare knee. It drove him crazy that ever since she’d been married his brother she’d started dressing to repress her sensuality. A beautiful woman shouldn’t hide the way Savannah did.

  “Hardly.” But after glancing in her direction, he wasn’t sure if they were referring to the same thing after all. “You are talking about what happened in my office, aren’t you?”

  “You sound worried that I’m not.”

  “I don’t sound worried.” What was going on that he wanted last night’s encounter to have changed her somehow?

  It had been an interlude between ex-lovers. Nothing more. It certainly hadn’t changed anything going on with him. So why did he expect her to be any different? Trent ground his teeth together, disliking his uncertainty. To his relief, Savannah chose to elaborate without his prompting.

  “Being around you reminded me of the girl I used to be. You taught me how to take care of myself. I’d forgotten how to do that in the last year and a half.”

  As long as he could remember, he’d lectured her on the need to question people’s motives before agreeing to something. She’d lost much of her naïveté while living in New York, but obviously she sometimes forgot to be wary of people eager to take advantage of her.

  “Why didn’t you take care of yourself while married to my brother?”

  “In a lot of ways, your brother was like your father. He wanted a particular kind of wife. One who did as he asked and never argued. I didn’t realize our marriage wasn’t going to be a partnership until too late.”

  For the first time, it occurred to Trent that she hadn’t been happy. Again came that urge to comfort her. Again he resisted. She wasn’t his to worry about. Helping her sort through what was going on with the label was about getting back at his father. She’d hit the nail on the head last night when she’d encouraged him to demonstrate to Siggy that he was a better businessman.

  “I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.”

  “I’m not sure I had an idea what I was hoping for.”

  Again her remark prompted questions, but Trent refrained from diving in. Last night she’d said she didn’t want to talk about her marriage. He sure as hell didn’t want to hear about it today.

  He parked the car in the hotel parking lot and they went in the front entrance together. She’d chosen a budget chain, with none of the bells and whistles she might have enjoyed if his brother hadn’t left her in debt. Whatever else had changed with her, she remained fiscally responsible.

  Trent had booked himself into the Wilshire for the night. Although he could very easily have dropped Savannah off and headed to his hotel, he felt as if he owed her some idea of what he had planned.

  Her standard hotel room was empty when they arrived. A crib had been set up by the window, but Dylan wasn’t in it and the babysitter was nowhere to be seen.

  “Shouldn’t they be here?” For some reason the sight of the empty hotel room alarmed him. Maybe it was the way Savannah had tensed.

  “I told Lori not to go anywhere until I got back.” Savannah fumbled in her purse for her phone and scrolled through her contacts. “She didn’t send me a text and she’s not answering her phone. Where could they be?” The pitch of her voice registered anxiety.

  “How long have you known this girl?”

  “I first hired her to babysit Dylan right after Rafe’s death. I knew there would be a lot to do and that it would disrupt Dylan’s routines too much if I brought him everywhere I needed to go.”

  “And you checked her out?”

  Savannah shot him a dark look. “I hired her through a reputable agency that had her thoroughly vetted.”

  “And she hasn’t done anything like this before?”

  “If by like this you mean taken Dylan somewhere without telling me, not to my knowledge.”

  Trent could tell his interrogation of Savannah wasn’t helping the situation, and she was looking more upset by the minute.

  “What is it you aren’t telling me?” Trent demanded.

  “Nothing really.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s just that your father...”

  Savannah had been dialing as she’d begun her explanation. Now she spoke to the person who’d answered. “Aunt Stacy,” Savannah said into the phone. “I was wondering if Lori is still there with Dylan?” She paused and her entire body slumped with relief. “No, that’s fine. I wasn’t expecting him to be gone. Lori didn’t say anything about heading over there.” A pause. “Oh, he did? No, he didn’t say anything to me about it.”

  Fury rose in Trent while he waited for her to finish chatting with her aunt. The part of him that wasn’t plotting his father’s downfall admired Savannah’s ability to remain calm and think under pressure.

  “No need to mention I called,” Savannah was saying, her voice showing no stress at all. “I’ll be by in a bit.”

  When she disconnected the call, she sank onto the bed and put her face in her hands. Her body shook as she gasped in a ragged breath. Trent put his hand on her shoulder. She jerked away as if burned. Her blue eyes were hot as she gazed up into his face. But as quickly as her temper flared, she calmed down.

  “Sorry. That wasn’t directed at you.” She waved her hand in a random gesture. “Lori took Dylan over to Siggy’s.”

  “Without saying anything to you or asking if it was okay?”

  “He told her he’d cleared it with me.” She rose, her movements stiff and slow as if every muscle in her body ached. “I guess I messed with him so he messed with me.”

  “I should have anticipated something like this.”

  “Neither of us
had any way of knowing.” Her neutral tone was at odds with the fear and anger she’d demonstrated moments earlier. “I’m sorry to ask for another favor, but do you mind driving me over there? It looks as if Lori helped herself to my car.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  Five minutes later, they were back in the LA traffic. Savannah’s fierce demeanor invited no conversation. Trent kept his focus on the road. The drive to his father’s house took over an hour. It was a tense sixty minutes. He couldn’t imagine what she was going through, the panic she must have felt coming back to the hotel and finding her son gone, the roller coaster of emotions when she figured out the nanny had taken Dylan to his grandfather.

  Trent wanted to be there when she faced down Siggy, but when they pulled up to the enormous Beverly Hills mansion, she shook her head when he shut off the car.

  “I need to do this on my own.”

  “Are you sure that’s your best option? My father will try to bully you.”

  “He’s gone too far this time.”

  “Call me when you’re on your way back to the hotel.” Everything in him was clamoring to accompany her into the mansion and act as her champion. “I need to know you’re okay.”

  “I’m going to be just fine.”

  “Regardless. Call me.”

  With a nod, Savannah got out of the car and Trent stared at the mansion’s front door long after she was lost from view.

  Five

  Savannah’s heels clicked against the travertine tile of the wide entryway as she let herself into Siggy’s mansion. The earlier heat of anger had been replaced by icy determination. Ever since she’d come to live in this house at age eleven, she’d been intimidated by the man who lived here. She’d seen how he criticized his sons, dominated his staff and intimidated his business associates.

  But today he’d stopped being someone to fear. Today, he’d interfered with her son, and she would do whatever it took to make sure that never happened again.

  Set on a half-acre lot, the modern house had a wide-open floor plan that was perfect for entertaining. As a child, Savannah had witnessed hundreds of parties, and when she was old enough, she’d served at many.